Presenters

• Kathie Debenham and Pat Debenham
• Anne Green Gilbert and Chris Roberts
• Kathleen Kingsley and Randy Barron
• Judith Nelson
• Kathleen Bunker Sheffield

Randy Barron, as an arts educator, brings over 25 years of classroom teaching experience into schools of all levels. As a workshop presenter for the Kennedy Center¿s Art in Education program, he has conducted professional development workshops, as well as numerous arts-integrated residencies, in 25 states. Randy has written arts curriculum affecting over 250,000 students in both urban and rural school districts. He is also a founding member and the current curriculum coordinator for the Río Gallinas School, an elementary charter school in Las Vegas, New Mexico, focused on ecology and the arts. As a professional dancer, Randy has choreographed for, performed with, and directed several ballet and modern dance companies in both the United States and Europe. He is a cofounder and former artistic co-director of City in Motion Dance Theater in Kansas City, Missouri.

Kathie Debenham, CLMA, is a professor of dance at Utah Valley University (UVU), where she served as the founding chair of the Dance Department and Modern Dance Program director. She is presently interim dean of the School of the Arts at UVU. Kathie holds an MA from Brigham Young University, where she taught from 1976¬¬¬1994 and created The Dancers¿ Company. She is a master teacher/artist for the Utah Arts Council and has taught numerous residencies throughout the state of Utah and beyond. As coartistic director of the BYU Young DanceMakers for more than 20 years, she taught creative dance to children of all ages and directed annual full evening concerts of more than 100 young performers. From 19852002, she codirected, performed, and choreographed for Contemporary DANCEWORKS; with the company she provided in-service training, lecture-performances, and teaching residencies for schools throughout Utah.

She received her certification in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis (CLMA) from the University of Utah Integrated Movement Studies Program in 1997 and has found endless applications in her teaching (all ages and stages), choreography, writing, performance, administrative duties, and life work. Kathie has presented the Laban/Bartenieff work at numerous regional, national, and international conferences in dance and the humanities and is fascinated with human movement in all its expressive possibilities. She and her husband, Pat, have enjoyed many years of artistic collaboration, with family-making at the heart of their dapnce-making.

Present passions are his three lively daughters; their husbands, of course; the grandchildren, his multifaceted wife, Kathie; and a desire for good food, thoughtful reading, and good conversation.

Pat Debenham is a founding member of daCi and has worked with school children as a master teacher both regionally and nationally for over 30 years, most recently with residencies in the public schools for the Utah State Arts Council. For 15 years, he was co-artistic director of and performer with Contemporary DANCEWORKS, a professional modern dance company that has received substantial grants from the Utah State Office of Education to provide in-service training and residencies for schools throughout Utah. Most recently he was an invited teacher/choreographer for a cultural convention of Asian Rim international high schools in Jakarta, Indonesia.

For more than ten years, as a teacher/choreographer, he worked in significant ways with The Young DanceMakers, a creative dance company in the tradition of Virginia Tanner, sponsored by Brigham Young University. His choreography for youth includes full evening works entitled Jabberwok, Rain Makes Applesauce, and There¿s a Train Going by My Window. His choreography with children was presented at daCi in Salt Lake City and he was a copresenter with Mary Ann Lee at daCi in Brazil. Having been involved as a workshop teacher for the previous two U.S.A. Intergenerational Gatherings, Pat looks forward again to be working with such engaging young people.

Present passions are his three lively daughters; their husbands, of course; the grandchildren, his multifaceted wife, Kathie; and a desire for good food, thoughtful reading, and good conversation.

Anne Green Gilbert is director of the Creative Dance Center and Kaleidoscope Dance Company, which she founded in Seattle, Washington, in 1981. The Creative Dance Center is a unique private studio offering creative and modern dance for infants through adults. Kaleidoscope is a modern dance company for children ages 8–15 that performs throughout Washington State and tours internationally. Anne is recognized throughout the United States and abroad as one of the leading dance educators. When not teaching creative dance at CDC or choreographing for Kaleidoscope, Anne trains teachers through her Summer Dance Institute for Teachers. Anne has conducted hundreds of workshops for children and adults across the United States and in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Finland, Russia, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Brazil, and Portugal. Anne is the author of Teaching the Three Rs Through Movement, Creative Dance for All Ages, Brain-Compatible Dance Education, Teaching Creative Dance (DVD) and BrainDance (DVD), as well as numerous articles. Anne was the first chair of Dance and the Child International USA Chapter and has served on the daCi board for the past 12 years. She has received numerous awards, including the 1999 AAHPERD Honor Award and the 2005 NDA Scholar/Artist Award.

Kathleen Kingsley began at age eight to study and perform modern dance and ballet with the Minnesota Dance Theatre under the direction of Loyce Houlton. She later studied with Chase Robinson and Susanna Hayman-Chafee of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Marcia McFee of the Nikolais-Lewis Dance Company, and Susan Warden of the Susan Warden Dancers, among others. While living in Colombia, she performed with the Ballet Folklórico de Gloria Peña in Barranquilla and with the Ballet Nacional de Gloria de Lozano in Bogotá. Kathleen was a soloist with the Tampa Ballet, performed with Whose Move? Dance Mime Theater in Tampa, and was resident choreographer with the Westport Ballet Theatre before joining four other area dancer-choreographers to found City in Motion Dance Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. She served as one of its three artistic co-directors from 19851995. In 1989 she founded the City in Motion Children¿s Dance Theater, which she directed for six years. A dance educator for over 25 years, Kathleen has conducted dance residencies in schools and communities of all types and sizes throughout the U.S. She has presented workshops for New Mexico Charter School Conferences; New Mexico Association of Art Educators; the National Dance Education Association; the National Hospice Organization; the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina; and the dance and the Child international 2006 Conference in The Hague. Kathleen is currently developing and teaching the dance curriculum for Río Gallinas Charter School as well as teaching dance classes and directing the Las Vegas Children¿s Dance Theater.

Judith Nelson, dance artist and educator, danced with the Jose Limon Dance Company, The David Gordon Pick-Up Company (appearing on Dance in America for PBS), and many other modern dance companies.  She has also toured nationally and internationally in musical theatre.  Her extensive work with children includes conducting numerous school residencies through the NEA Artists-in-Schools Program for K–12, offering classes, lecture-demonstrations, student performances, and parent/teacher workshops.  She has also taught for a wide variety of community arts programs throughout the United States.  Judith trained in childrens’ dance with the renowned dance educator Virginia Tanner at the University of Utah.  She holds a master of fine arts degree in drama from the University of Arizona and a bachelor of fine arts degree, magna cum laude, in dance from the University of Utah.  Most recently, Judith was associate professor of theatre at Auburn University in Alabama, where she initiated and directed a dance program, including an outreach program emphasizing literacy and cultural diversity that toured regional elementary schools in Alabama and Georgia. Currently, Judith resides in Brooklyn, New York, where she is a “mad-hot” ballroom teacher in the New York City public schools, in addition to her many other projects.

Chris Roberts has taught children and adults for 30 years. He received his BS degree in elementary education/special education from Brigham Young University and has a masters degree in educational psychology (gifted and talented), also from BYU. He has been teaching dance (along with everything else) to children every day for the past 10 years. Chris has taught dance workshops for the Utah State Office of Education and has cotaught with Marilyn Berrett in Brazil at the daCi World Conference. Chris was a keynote presenter at the Fall Networking Arts Conference in Ogden and was a copresenter in a panel and lecture-demonstration (with Marilyn Berrett and Julie Ahlander) at the Fall 2003 National Dance Education Organization Conference in Albuquerque. He also copresented a paper (with Marilyn Berrett) at the 2006 NDEO Conference in Long Beach, California. Chris is a proud graduate of Anne Green Gilbert's two-week teacher workshop in Seattle. He loves giving children the opportunity to express their creativity through dance.

Kathleen Bunker Sheffield is currently the director of the Brigham Young University Children’s and Teens Creative Dance Program, a program of 350 + children ages 3–18.  She is also the artistic director of the Young DanceMakers with 120 dancers featured as the programs performing group.  Kathleen has been involved in teaching children creative movement for the past 28 years.  She graduated with her M.A. in modern dance and educational leadership from BYU in 1989.  Since that time she has been a faculty member at BYU teaching courses in Technique, Composition, Improvisation, and Teaching Methods.  Her choreography has delighted audiences throughout Utah.  She enjoys working with dancers of all ages and values the worth and uniqueness of each individual dancing spirit. She and her husband Bryce live in Springville, Utah, with their three children.